Jeremy Slate

Born Robert Perham, matinee idol Jeremy Slate had a career that ranged from Westerns of the late 1960s to TV soaps in the 1980s. At 18, Slate enlisted and served in World War II, and was at the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. After the war, his job in public relations took him to Peru, and he began to dabble in theater as a hobby. It wasn't long before he won a Tiahuanacothe--essentially a Peruvian Tony; such success motivated Slate to take his talent to Broadway. Following a stint in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Look Homeward, Angel," he launched his screen career as salvage-diver Larry Lahr on "The Aquanauts." From here he began to put in appearances on prime-time TV shows until Slate hit his stride portraying outlaws in biker flicks and Westerns. As Daniel "Danny" Carmody in "The Born Losers" he played a charismatic gang leader, and in "Hell's Angels '69," which he wrote the script for, Slate worked alongside several actual members of the infamous motorcycle gang. That same year he appeared with the legendary John Wayne in the Western "True Grit." Slate was also a talented country-and-western lyricist who penned the words to the song "Every Time I Itch (I Wind Up Scratchin' You)," sung by his other "True Grit" co-star, Glenn Campbell. After a stint on "Gunsmoke" in the early 1970s, Slate fell into TV and soap opera work, with an eight-year run as Chuck Wilson on "One Life to Live" and a brief role on "Guiding Light."